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I don't want to get too deeply into what specific details the Freemium program will consist of, partly because that's worthy of its own thread separate from this, and partly because I don't 100% know yet which features will be implemented on release on August 1st or September 1st and which will come further down the road and I hate promising deadlines before I know I can meet them.

You broke your own promise mister!

"In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."

"Although many of us consider ourselves forward-thinkers, we still cling tenaciously to the old values of the system."

"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force"

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The Treasury Gnomes for example will give an automatic bonus percentage to all coin earned for subscribers, and a further bonus for premium players, and the same will apply to CombatXP and other 'grinding' features in the game. There isn't much of an IC roleplay explanation for why the gnome is giving you extra money, you'll just have to suspend disbelief and 'bluebook you made the money somehow'. It's one of those RP immersion 'prices we have to pay' in order to add these features to the game, but I think it is a small one.

Instead of giving a coin bonus, why not make it a price discount at the bazaar/Royal Treasury? Since coin can be used outside of these purchases, the bonus could be seen as an unfair pay-to-win advantage, whereas the discount is a more discreet, unintrusive benefit.

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As tends to be the case with big coding projects, various coding hiccups have occurred, but they're steadily being sorted. Rest assured this remains my top priority, I put a good 4 or 5 hours of coding into this each day and will continue to do so.

Instead of giving a coin bonus, why not make it a price discount at the bazaar/Royal Treasury? Since coin can be used outside of these purchases, the bonus could be seen as an unfair pay-to-win advantage, whereas the discount is a more discreet, unintrusive benefit.

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Some brief updates on this project, as it's been a bit since I've said anything on it.

FREEMIUM CODE AND CHARACTER LIMITATIONS

The actual Freemium code which allows you to log on to CM with an expired account but limits you to playing a single character is complete. By now you may have noticed some unusual messages when logging on to Castle Marrach in regards to your account status. Right now it's not actually possible to log on to Castle Marrach without a Skotos subscription, and it won't be until we fully release Freemium and flip the "on" button, but the all the code for this is done on our end.

How this will actually work?

Regardless of account status you will be able to log on all of your characters, but if you do not have an active Skotos subscription you will only be able to play one of those characters. The first time you log in to the game with your account expired, all of your characters are moved to solitary OOC quarantine zones, there is no way out of these quarantine zones and no way to have IC interaction with other players while quarantined. For now we're allowing that you can sit on your "locked" characters in those quarantine zones and use the who list and @page command and other OOC functions, however we may at any time decide to revoke this.

While quarantined, the @freemium command will allow you to release one quarantined character on your account into the game world. At that point this chosen character is saved to your account as your free character, so use this command with care as Marrach Staff will not undo your choice should you change your mind. Your free character can be changed with use of StoryPoints if you should wish to switch your free character to another character on your account. Additionally, should you re-subscribe to Skotos, the next time your subscription lapses you will be allowed to select your free character anew.

Again, until we fully release Castle Marrach Freemium, none of these above changes are in effect. This is just to let you all know that the code work on this is now complete, and to give you an explanation on how it will work.

MAJOR PLOT

The general storyline for the next Major plot has been written out, a lot of the maps and images and other photoshop work is done as well. There's a fair bit of building left to do that will keep our builders busy but fortunately we have many more builders than we do coders.

Enough is complete that we could start the plot now, but after the Hand of Five shenanigans I promised myself we'd never start another plot until all the leg work was done, as I hate as much as any of you when a plot stalls out mid story because more building/coding needed to be done.

MCOMBAT 4 UPDATE

This has taken up the majority of my time, and has been the major culprit for delay so far. While I considered just moving on ahead without it, it's going to play a role in the next major Castle Marrach plot so its update is unavoidably necessary.

Progress on it is going well, despite its size and the time its taken. It's by far the single largest system we've introduced to Castle Marrach, adding 8 new @teachable martial skills and over 100 combat abilities, most of which can be learned and stored in your character in a fashion similar to how sorcery spells are currently learned, in addition to support for ranged and sorcery combat, and of course MCombat AI with a threat system, all on a single combat system.

I'm on the last legs of finishing this off now. What I'd hoped would take 3 weeks has taken 3 months, but the light at the end of the tunnel is within sight. Barring any unforseen complications (which admittedly can happen at any time with something like this) I'm hoping to have this ready for release for players to start experimenting within the next week or so. And then it will be bug fixes for all the ways you guys find to break it.

OTHER CHANGES

Other changes mentioned in the original post likely won't be implemented right away, but rather over time. Right now our priority is to release the Free Game Access coupled with the Major Plot and the MCombat Update simultaneously as Freemium Day One Release. Other features discussed in the original post are icing that will continue to gradually be added to the game over time, so as not to slow the release of Freemium any further than necessary. I can't give any specific ETA on those features other than to say they'll continue to be worked on, and the Freemium program will continue to be updated and improved upon indefinitely as long as Castle Marrach is around.

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This is awesome! I admit I'm always impressed with how quickly you get things done. Kudos!!!

I do however have two questions. How many stps will it be to switch characters and how often can we switch our free character?

At this time no certain determination has been made on that, we'll have to crunch some numbers and find something that makes it a plausible purchase option but not so convenient as to circumvent the Freemium character limit by frequent swapping of your free character.

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As someone who always loved "dual-class" and "hybrid" character builds, I personally do not like the concept of 'castes.' I can understand you don't want to have everyone be expert at everything. Yet there are always dilettantes and jack-of-all-trades types. Personally I loathe games that force people into "cookie-cutter" class concepts. So, of all the great features, that gets a hairy eyeball from me.

~ Gareth Beaumains ~

~ For Love! For Valour!
~ For Honour! For Glory!
~ Onwards to Adventure!

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From what Kurzon said at the last community meeting a few weeks ago, the caste system might not be implemented.

Proud member of: WWMHSBA

"Why don't you all just go submit some plots where you can get pregnant, give birth to you own alt as an annoying child character, have it grow up to be a drama queen, and then you can use IC/OOC crossover to hide the goods you stole and escape from the dungeon that you're locked in due to a badly run rape plot?!" - Age

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Yet there are always dilettantes and jack-of-all-trades types. Personally I loathe games that force people into "cookie-cutter" class concepts.

While being forced into one "role" in a game can sometimes be a drag. There are definitely people who abuse being able learn anything they can get their hands on in CM at the very least. I've seen it, I've had people ask my character and other characters for lessons in things they probably had no business knowing.

I agree that there's nothing wrong with having a few jack-of-all-trades types. The problem with the current system is that we have way more than a few. Not everyone can be great at everything. At the very least, some work needs to be put into people either knowing a lot a bout a few things or a few things about a lot of stuff. Not both.